


The Scars That Make Us

by WorldsForbidden



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Discussion of top surgery, M/M, Mr X has no time for your human bullshit, No beta we die like Marvin, Nonbinary X, Panic Attack, Trans Leon Kennedy, Transman, Tyrant and Leon have made friends, Wound and care, X is confused but tries its best, disphoria
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29215317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorldsForbidden/pseuds/WorldsForbidden
Summary: When Leon is wounded by a licker in the police station, the tyrant sees the scars that he's been hiding since he joined the police academy.
Relationships: Leon S. Kennedy/Mr. X | Tyrant T-00, Leon S. Kennedy/Tyrant
Comments: 2
Kudos: 71





	The Scars That Make Us

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in RE and on Archive! This was written at the request of a dear friend, who is a transman recovering from top surgery. (I'm so proud of you dude!) 
> 
> If you see any errors please let me know!! And please forgive formatting issues! It's a bit rough, but I like it for a late night scribble.

“Come on, big guy, we’re almost to the parking garage.” Leon glanced back as he rounded the corner of the hall, grinning toothily at the giant lumbering after him.

As always, the monster merely watched him impassively as it followed. Its pale little eyes watched him with the same intensity as it had when it was chasing him. They’d cleared this hallway already, so there was little to fear, even without his new ally.

A skitter. A hiss from somewhere in front of him.

X’s pale eyes snapped wide, looking just behind him.

_Pain, hot and vicious._

Claws cut through his Kevlar like paper, deep into his side.

The licker screamed, sounding so distant, and it was answered by a roar that sounded like gravel.

 _It wasn’t supposed to be in this hall, this hall was cleared, it was safe_ —somewhere far off there was a thud, a scream, and a truly terrible crunch and splatter. He hardly noticed the noise, aware only of the hot blood streaming from his side and wicking into his only set of clothes. _Not that that matters, Leon._ His vision blurred, from pain and rage and grief. So close. He’d been—they’d been—so close. And now… He couldn’t feel his feet. His fingertips were going numb, he was falling— _when had he started falling?_

Then hands were on him, massive hands, rough in their haste to catch him. They were yanking off his Kevlar, and he was powerless to do anything but yelp and squirm uselessly. Buckles tore easily and it was all he could do to muffle the scream threatening to rip from his throat when it jolted him. It was nothing like he’d felt before, worse than any injury, worse than-

The hands were tugging at his shirt, and a very old, very violent fear welled in his chest.

\--

 _Failure._ The word screamed in the tyrant’s head over and over as he worked to free Leon of the layers hindering its view of the injury. The injury that _it_ had allowed to happen. It had been so distracted, had grown so complacent without Umbrella’s needles in its head that it had not sensed the licker until it was too late. Even the feeling of its bones crunching under its massive hands did nothing to soothe the strange feeling in his chest, nor the hollowness forming in its belly as it stared at the blood covering Leon’s side. It did not know this feeling, but it knew that it did not like lit.

Its hands, free of their bloodied gloves, made quick work of the body armor. Odd rasping grumbles slipped from it when Leon cried out in pain. Each whimper and muffled whine dug the hollow feeling ever deeper. X struggled to gentle its hold, but it made little difference to the pain Leon was in. Seeing the young officer so pliant was… strange. Some small part of the tyrant was pleased at Leon’s submission, at simply allowing it to handle him, but this feeling was stomped down. It could self-analyze later.

The police overshirt was torn free of the nearly-limp man, who was panting shallowly for breath now, sweating and far too pale. The tyrant wasn’t entirely sure that he was even conscious as it reached for the black undershirt. As soon as its rough fingers touched the shirt, Leon was thrashing, crying out in agony even as he twisted. The scent of his blood and the sudden protest drew a low, gravelly growl from the tyrant. It struggled to contain the writhing man, who suddenly acted like a wild beast in his frantic attempt to get away.

“Please-! Stop,” Leon rasps, panicked tears stinging his eyes as he fought to keep his shirt on. _It couldn’t know, it couldn’t—it had just started to trust him, if it learned this it would-_

Frustration crept into the coldness in the tyrant’s chest, and it scowled. Did Leon think it was going to hurt him? Now, after all of this? The thought turned the cold to ice, and it was quickly discarded. No, simply fear. Not for the tyrant itself, but fear in general. Leon was afraid, and he was losing blood. And in his fear, he was acting a foolish human thing and was trying to hide his injuries.

The distant, gurgling snarl of a zombie reached its ears, and the tyrant paused, calculating. Where was the best place to clean and care for his wound? So little here was left that was still ‘clean’ in this place… Showers. That would do well enough. The tyrant scooped Leon up, and the man half-muffled a shout as his wound was jostled.

The tyrant was fast, but it still felt like an age before they reached the showers and Leon was laid on a bench. The entrances were barricaded in a matter of moments, and the tyrant was back at the rookie’s side. This time the tyrant gave the wounded man no chance to resist, and the shirt was torn—literally—free of Leon. Pale, sharp eyes scanned over the wound. Two large cuts across his right ribs. Not too terribly deep, but bleeding fairly heavily, and it was partially hidden by the man’s arms.

Leon kept hugging at himself, shaking terribly and the tyrant had to grapple with him to get him where it wanted him. Its large hands fumbled a bit in the blood, and it looked up to find the human huddled in on himself, seeming almost oblivious to blood staining his side. Too much blood. It needed to see the wound, and it needed to see it _now._ It lifted the shivering man as carefully as it was able, nostrils flaring at the scent and sound of pain and panic. It took in a deep breath, lowered its face to Leon’s, and let out a loud, gravel-filled snarl.

The young cop jerked as though he’d been shot, eyes snapping wide at the sound. He flinched away from the tyrant’s ashen face and groaned in pain. He rasped in a breath, blinked away tears, and looked up. The tyrant was staring at him, scowling as it always was, but its eyes seemed wider than they usually did—and then cold water blasted him in the face and he was abruptly too distracted to worry about covering his scars. He lifted his hands to block the stream, and the tyrant took the chance to rinse the blood from the wounds, uncaring of the showerhead blasting them both with icy water.

Without the blood, it didn’t seem quite as terrible, though it was clear that it was a wound that needed treatment. The tyrant rumbled low in its chest and moved back out of the water to retrieve the healing spray. When he sat the shirtless man back onto the bench, the cop’s hands were shaking still, but he didn’t move to cover the wound again. He stared up at the tyrant with wide blue eyes, but X was too focused on digging through the packs in the remains of the cop’s vest to care; as long as he wasn’t hindering its treatment of the injury, the man could stare all he liked. He did squawk a bit when one of the pockets tore under the tyrant’s massive hands, but when he saw the healing spray he quieted down.

“Oh, uh. Good idea,” he offered lamely, and X just huffed. The tyrant crouched, and Leon started to lift his hands up again toward his chest. X growled, and the man flinched, but he stopped. It took a moment to get the spray situated in it oversized hand, made more awkward by the thick leather glove it wore, but eventually a thumb pressed the cold spray across the wound. Leon hissed and twitched under the sting of antiseptic and healing chemicals, only narrowly managing to keep himself still.

X was methodical as it always was, spraying until every inch of the wound was coated and the can was emptied entirely. It stared at the cuts until the bleeding slowed to a trickle, and the edges of the wound began to close. Finally it dug for the bandages it knew were also in the tiny infernal pockets. When it tore yet another in its mounting frustration with the buttons, Leon intervened to get them himself. “Ackstopit-! I got it, I got it.”

The tyrant leaned back to let the little human do the searching, and it took the opportunity to examine the newly exposed flesh of its small companion for the first time. Leon was pale, which the tyrant expected based on the color of his face, and his chest was lightly dusted with blond hair. He had several bruises from his encounters with the infected throughout the night, but thankfully the injury to his side was the only cut. Most interestingly, however, were two neat, symmetrical lines—scars, it realized—just under each pectoral muscle, a few inches beneath the nipple. The scars were not small; both were several inches long, and they were still faintly red as though they had only recently been healed. They were not injuries; these had been inflicted intentionally, but why?

It looked up and found Leon staring at him, seeming almost paralyzed. Once again it found itself annoyed at the fear the man showed to it; were they not over this? Surely after so much time cooperating the small human had lost its terror… And yet he sat, his light blue eyes wide and glassy. His hands twitched as though he longed to lift his arms to cover his chest again—to cover the scars, X realized with a start. Leon didn’t want it to see the scars. But why? What did a pair of scars matter to a tyrant? X rumbled softly and tilted its head in silent question.

Leon blinked at him, opened his mouth, closed it again, took a breath. “You… don’t know what they are?” He half-whispered.

X remained silent, simply staring; if history was any indication, the young man would quickly explain, if only to fill the quiet he seemed to hate so very much.

“It’s… they’re scars.” When X snorted at him in clear annoyance, his lips twitched as though he wanted to smile. “I, uh. Had top surgery a little while ago, to remove my, um, breasts.” The last word he flinched a little on, and X puzzled over this information.

It only ended up confused; clearly, this surgery had been pointless, given that the man’s flat breasts were still there, nipples and all. When it tilted its head further, Leon huffed a great sigh.

“Fuck, you really don’t know. Uh. So, when I was born, everyone decided I was a girl. But they were wrong; I’m a man. But because I… looked, like a girl, people assumed I was one, and when I came out as a trans man—a man assigned the wrong gender at birth—I, uh. Well, I got a lot of shit about it. My top surgery removed most of the breast tissue, so they look like ‘male’ pecs, like I should have,” He managed a watery sort of smile at the tyrant.

X huffed. Humans were so foolish; surely Leon would know better than anyone else what he was? It did its best to display its thoughts with what little facial expression it could manage, and Leon muffled a laugh with a wince of pain.

“Yeah. I, uh, pass? With my shirt on, but people who see the scars… know I’m trans, and a lot of them… react really badly. I was afraid you would, too.”

X just stared at Leon and huffed again. Then it extended its massive hand toward the young man, slow enough to be avoided should Leon wish to. The young man flinched slightly as though expecting a blow, but when none came, he took a deep breath and relaxed. The tyrant ran a gloved fingertip over the scar beneath his right nipple, a low, unpleasant-sounding rumble released from its chest as it considered this new information. Leon was ashamed of these scars, but it did not understand why; they were the proof that a problem had been corrected, that he had been brave enough to do so. It wished for just an instant, that it could remove its glove in order to actually feel the smooth, pink flesh.

Leon took a sharp breath at the contact, but it remained featherlight, and slowly he relaxed. “…Heh. Should’ve known you wouldn’t be a bigot.”

X gave him a steady, patient look as though it thought he was the most foolish creature it had ever seen, and began wrapping the slowly healing injury. Leon smiled.


End file.
